Employee engagement is “the emotional commitment the employee has to the organization and its goals. When employees care — when they are engaged — they use discretionary effort,” Forbes magazine says, and this leads to better business outcomes.

The City of Centennial is a case in point. In 2014, the city measured employee engagement, using Gallup’s Q12 engagement survey. At the same time, with the city’s executive leadership and human resources director, introduced the entire team to the Clifton StrengthsFinder assessment tool.

Some of the daily improvements these tools have provided include a common language to view projects, challenges and employee contributions, a unifying force to drive together toward goals, and a source of resiliency when unexpected changes and challenges arise.

Since completing the assessment, and using the accompanying work to help individuals understand and leverage their strengths, several key improvements have been noted.

For instance, interview panels are now assembled based on a variety of strengths profiles for a more balanced assessment of candidates. The means department heads are less likely to hire someone “just like me.”

In addition, real improvements have been seen in relationships among coworkers who had conflict. They have bridged gaps in misunderstanding and cleared up miscommunications by considering how they differ and learning to value one another’s strengths. They have depersonalized miscommunications and reached common ground, resulting in higher levels of engagement and productivity.

Assessments and team-building tools often are viewed as having an impact that is limited to soft skills, and may be difficult to measure. Among the measurable results that the City of Centennial has realized through its focus on employee engagement and strengths-based focus:

• Turnover dropped to 1.6 percent in 2015 from 42 the year before.

• Engagement increased to 73 percent from 55 percent during the same period.

This team combined strengths in analytics, big picture thinking, creativity and practical thinking and turned their proposal around in less than a week. Without the level of engagement present in the organization today, this team — already tasked with a large workload — says the speed and quality of their response wouldn’t have been possible.

Centennial, in December 2014, won a $1.5 million Bloomberg grant, designed to give city employees the resources and time to tackle big projects and hatch great ideas. Some goals the city will address include applying new technologies and creative concepts to help improve traffic flow, reduce motor vehicle traffic congestion hours and related costs, and improve pedestrian and bicycle safety, including safe routes to schools.

The leadership in this organization asserts that it takes work to build an engaged culture where people want to come to work and do their best work. Further, they acknowledge that focusing on strengths — rather than weaknesses — is not necessarily human nature. In this instance, this team was transformed from a good team to a great team, one that is lean, innovative and built to meet the evolving demands of the city they serve.

Kathleen Winsor-Games is the principal of The Winsor Group, a Denver-based boutique firm offering high performance career and workplace coaching. She blogs at thewinsorgroup.com/blog

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